Asiatic Hornets - to Trap or not to Trap?

According to the information available on Asiatic Hornet life-cycles - plus a large dose of observation over the past several years - over-wintered AH queens have been out on the wing looking for carbohydrate-heavy forage since the end of February.

Now this knowledge gives us a tough choice...

We try not to kill any creatures and to let nature sort out the balance between the various species who share our home with us.  But... we know that each queen can go on to build nests that will house thousands of adult hornets, each capable of eating up to 50 honeybees per day during the summer.  So any queens we can stop during the Spring could mean saving entire colonies later in the year.

Trapped Asiatic Hornet queens from the garden

Whilst our choice won't be for everyone, we have decided to trap queens now and have weighed this up as the lesser of several evils (certainly not a choice we wanted to make).  Consequently, we have been experimenting with various types of traps and, more importantly it would seem, the lures/bait to go inside them.  There are many, many types of trap available and a quick Google search will reveal lots of interesting and entrepreneurial ideas from beekeeping suppliers and beekeepers alike from all over Europe.

Some are very simple - make a trap out of a fizzy drink bottle, for example.  And some are ingenious but in our view, to be truly successful at protecting honeybees,
they need to be a lot cheaper to encourage mass uptake.  For example, there are traps which are integrated into the base of hive floors, but these actually attract hornets directly to the hive so we won't use them until the hornets have already discovered and are predating on our bees for their protein needs over the summer.  No point advertising their location if we don't have to!

Others resemble shoe boxes and can be used with a variety of baits depending on the time of year and the good news here is 3-fold: 1) they are made using queen-excluder materials so bees that are trapped can escape.  2) the price has come down dramatically! Initially, they cost nearly €200 each but adaptations are now available for €25 😃 And finally, the designs are simple to develop to suit your needs should you want to (we aren't condoning copyright infringement here)...

Home-made box trap

Whichever traps we use, their effectiveness is clearly linked to the bait/lure used to attract the hornets in the first place. Given the queens' need for carbs just now, we use a mixture tried and tested by many French beekeepers and widely shared throughout the community:

• 50% dark beer
• 25% sirop de cassis (full-sugar fruit cordial) 
• 25% white wine

The beer and the fruity cordial attract many insects but the acidity of the white wine seems to deter bees of all varieties so we can avoid capturing the creatures we are trying to protect.  The downside is that you might catch the odd moth and flies, depending on the traps you use.  But for us this is still hugely preferable to the amount of by-catch which results when using so-called sticky traps... on which we have indeed caught hornets, alongside mice, lizards, butterflies and the odd bee.  We're not saying don't buy these, of course, just highlighting some of the consequences.

So, if you have bees to protect, what do you do?  Let us know your ideas for capturing the hornets without risking other, indigenous creatures.  Your thoughts are always welcome and the more ideas we can share, the quicker we will come to a solution that works for everyone and every critter too.